Strangers in a Strange Land
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: "The night that Gon Freecs arrived in America, he met the angel of death." A no-powers, true Earth setting; hisogon pre-slash


written as a commission for tumblr user Izamun, who was a delight to work with

this started life as a clip on my fiction blog and now has a life of its own. I'm pretty busy with school so I don't have any plans to lengthen it at the current time.

* * *

The first time Gon ever met Hisoka Morrow, he was twelve years old.

He'd been in LA for barely a day, so fascinated by the strange smells and noises and unfamiliar rituals that he'd hardly slept. The hotel that he'd booked was a pretty old wreck, once famous and now haunted, and he'd been so excited to poke around in a real life haunted hotel that he'd called up Killua less than three hours after parting at LAX and demanded that he come downtown and help Gon hunt for ghosts.

Leorio, who had booked the same place for the same reasons - convenience, but mostly money - came stumbling out of his hotel room at the familiar voices making a racket in the halls, and then Kurapika, who had not originally booked the hotel but had been talked into adjusting his plans over the course of their long, long layover, had heard them all arguing in the lobby -

Gon generally looked on the brightside, he'd been a happy kid, but that night was probably the first and last time that everyone around him had been so much a syncretic part of the _joy_ he found in living. Alone in a strange city, surrounded by new friends, another day closer to finding his father - when he thinks about it even now he can taste the milky sourness of Leorio's energy drink on his tongue, feel the sharp bite of the scaffolding under his fingers as he climbed.

They'd all met on the plane from Tokyo to California, total strangers, and then in the course of a terrible storm, a rerouted flight, and a _long_ layover, they'd touched down at LAX a fireforged ring of friends.

It was two or three in the morning, and with everyone else passed out on the floor of Gon's hotel room in a heap ("I'll only be a moment," Kurapika had said, "I just need to catch my breath…"), only Gon was left awake. His muscles were tired, but even the air seemed to tremble with excitement in his lungs as he breathed in the hot carbon-smelling sky of LA. He'd climbed onto one of the fancy porticos, underneath the blank sky and above the glittering city, and had been watching the streets for a few minutes.

It seemed to him then like a mirror world of his own home, where the stars stretched endlessly over the black, black sea. Even at this time of night, cars passed down the boulevards.

Since then Gon has seen a lot of things that did not make him happy. A lot of them were his own fault, by his figuring. If he'd seen those things before he saw Hisoka, it probably wouldn't have taken him so long to realize what he was looking at.

The figure on the street below he mistook, briefly, for a woman. The path of those low heels was light and graceful, like a dancer's - in the midst of the garbage and shattered glass, it was as strange as the passage of an alien, or an angel. From the other end of the little backstreet, two bulkier figures were making their way with less grace. Just as they were within arm's reach of each other, the two figures dipped suddenly into their pockets, and the lone figure -

It happened so fast. Gon was used to watching the strikes of snakes in the forest and a hundred other little deadly changes in the space of seconds, but he still couldn't see the knife. There should have been a flicker of light, and there should have been a moment that the lone figure reached into its own pockets for a weapon.

All Gon could see was this: the lunge, the cool interception, and the moment of awful silence before the screaming, where the severed fingers scattered through the air like confetti. Throughout all of this, Gon watched with wary interest. He was sure he was too far up to be seen, but whenever you were within smelling distance of violence, you were always a little bit involved.

In the dark light of the sleepless city, Gon could just make out a splash of blood across the lone figure's neck and chest, dark against the moon-white skin. As the two figures crumpled, wailing, to the ground, the victor paused, on the pavement below, and looked directly up at Gon.

It was the sharp motion of the chin, the panther-easiness of the shoulders, it was the whole deliberate moment that made Gon's heart crank in his chest like Mito's old car - rrrrr _fwoosh_ , rust shaking free and then scorching combustion.

"Aren't _you_ up late?" Hisoka said - although Gon didn't know that name then.

"It's my first day in the city," Gon said, conscientious of what Aunt Mito would say if she caught him outside at this hour.

"Ah," Hisoka said, with a little tilt of the head. "How do you like it so far?"

Blood glittered along the swan-white neck, soaked the pale shirt. The whole outfit wasn't quite like anything Gon had seen before - stockings and flowing pants, bare midriff, dozens of delicate bracelets clicking and catching the light - alien and angelic all at once. The weight of that stare was almost choking, it swept its clammy hand up the back of his neck and raised every hair in its path.

"It's strange," Gon answered, barely breathing. "It's exciting."

"So it is," Hisoka said, and in the reflection of the hotel's neon sign, those eyes glowed like coals. "Careful you don't bite off more of it than you can chew."

With that word of warning, Hisoka slipped into a low bow - hand to chest, the elegant sweep of an arm - and departed. The air itself almost creaked as the weight of that stare pulled free. On the pavement, moaning and cursing, two strangers lay among the mess of blood and severed digits like the sticky remains of a monstrous birthday party.

That night Gon lay awake in the darkness for a long time, thinking of an old comic he used to read on the island, the faded blue and white print - _Moon Men_ , it had been called, _Secret Enemy of Mankind!_

HXH

For Gon and all the rest of his friends, LA was a city of unfinished business. Leorio and his determination to make some quick cash in the back alleys ("Money!" he'd said, "Life is measured in cold hard cash!"), Kurapika and his cold determination to track down his family's murderers ("If you're the police," he'd said, "you can do whatever you like."), Killua's worry for his sister ("I don't want to spend the rest of my life jumping through hoops," he'd said, "but no matter how far I run, she's still there with them you know?") -

And Gon, with his father. Ging the famous archaeologist, who Gon had imagined for most of his childhood as Indiana Jones, hung hazily in front of him like a flag on a distant turret. His father had come to LA when _he_ was twelve, a penniless immigrant, and built himself an international reputation with sheer genius and tenacity. Gon was born here in this city, or at least that's what Mito used to say - technically an American citizen anyway, for sure - and coming back to it, the same age as his father had been the first time, felt right in all the ways that mattered.

But then the years had come and gone, along with the incomprehensible jungle of middle school in a strange country, and every lead he turned over seemed to end with another ghost. His impatience made no difference.

Every friend of his father's that he rooted out was glad to see him but helpless to point him anywhere other than towards another mysterious past associate. Not even Killua's dubious Hollywood Royalty could turn up more than a whisper. By the time he was sixteen, Gon had befriended every archeologist on the west coast, a league of video-game programmers, the entire staff of a wildlife preserve, and dozens of miscellaneous specialists in a dozens of miscellaneous fields.

It was an afternoon in the sweltering summer, when Killua and Gon were sweating through their lessons in the back of Biscuit Krueger's garden ("Your form is sloppy," she'd said, "there's art to breaking cement, it's not just whack and jab.") that Leorio first called with the idea to make some quick cash down in the slums, deep in the rings of illegal prizefighting that entertained the city's sleaziest Friday night crowd.

"Think about it!" he said, his tiny voice blaring through the speakers as Gon held the phone between his and Killua's ears. "You're both strong as hell, I mean, Killua's a martial arts prodigy and you're not far behind, Gon, we could make a killing down there."

Killua had been trained by his internationally acclaimed stunt choreographer father practically since he was standing on two legs, which Gon tried not to be jealous of, if only because it had made Killua so very unhappy over the years. Still, there was no doubt Gon's friend could knock out most of the adults in the country in a fair fight, even at 17.

Killua scoffed into the towel he was drying his face with. "Leorio," he said, "I _know_ the scene you're talking about. I was banned from that arena when I was twelve years old."

"What!?"

"I was a preteen runaway, what else was I gonna do? Turn tricks?"

"Why were you banned?" Gon asked, over Leorio's broken static howling.

Killua shrugged, but with that touchy little edge that meant he was secretly pleased. "I beat everybody they threw at me for months," he said, "including this one dumb lug who recognized me from the backlot of Karate Kid. When he told everybody who I was, they wouldn't let me fight anymore."

Killua's family had spent his entire childhood grooming him to be the next Bruce Lee, a relentless demanding grind that produced both Killua's super awesome physical skill and his loathing of parents, adults, Hollywood, and (sadly) Karate Kid. He'd made a break for it just as his parents were finishing up the contract negotiations to start a whole franchise of martial arts feature films starring their son.

He'd only come back, at last, after demonstrating that he could and would take his sister away and never come back, because he knew he had friends on the outside who would have his back. At which point the Zoldycks had reluctantly called up their agent and started contract negotiations for their one remaining viable son.

By her own account, Alluka had been a lot happier for not being the bargaining chip in a several-year familial schism, too.

"Leorio," Gon said, cutting into the tinny shouting. "You really think we could make money down there?"

"Well _I_ don't know," Leorio said peevishly, "apparently Killua is _banned_. I had this whole plan based on setting you up as a tag team against the older guys and then splitting you up-"

"We'll do it," Killua said. "I'm older now, the crowd probably won't recognize me until they sober up the morning after. I want my cut the night of, though."

"Forty percent," Leorio said.

"Sixty percent," Killua countered.

"Come oooooon," Leorio said, "your family's _loaded_ , you don't need the money. Your dad choreographs for _Universal._ "

"Seventy percent," Killua said, "I'm the talent. Muscle me out of my share and I'll walk."

There was a long staticy noise from the phone. "Alright, jeeze," Leorio said. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm some sleazy producer. Seventy percent for both of you. I'll pick you guys up from the old hotel at eight, okay?"

"Got it," Killua said, and snapped Gon's phone closed. Gon was hard on phones, with the way he got into trouble. It was easier to have one of the cheap prepaid ones and replace it every couple of months.

"What're you gonna do with your share?" Gon asked,

"Oh," Killua said, "I dunno, I don't need it. I was really negotiating for your sake. You're gonna need a lot more money if you want to fly down to Peru this summer to look for Ging."

Gon grinned at him. He really did have the best friends in the world.

Several hours after they'd said good night to Bisky, Leorio introduced them at the door to an industrial warehouse as a late enrolling tag team duo.

The bouncer, a big guy in a jacket with a patch that Gon was trying to place, scratched his pen across the top of the paper. "You kids got a team name you want on this?"

Killua and Leorio exchanged an uncertain look. Gon looked away from the patch (a humanitarian organization based out of Sacramento) and said, "Hunter Hunter."

Killua gave him an exasperated look.

The bouncer glanced down at him over his sunglasses. "Alright," he said, "if you say so. It's a three hundred dollar entry fee."

"Whoa," Leorio said, "hold on, that's outrageous. You can't ask first time competitors to front that kind of cash for a filler fight."

"You don't like it, don't sign up. But even the tag team prize is worth it if you're not a total skinflint."

Leorio paused. "How much?" he said.

The bouncer told him. All three of their jaws hit the floor.

Three hundred dollars and some squabbling later, Gon and his friends stood in the doorway to the arena, a blue-lit boxing ring sunken into the floor of the warehouse surrounded on all sides by cigar smoke and glittering eyes. The hum of business transactions almost muffled the sounds of the ring altogether - above the tables the walls glowed with screens showing numbers that Gon didn't understand, digits in constant motion - and in the middle of the ring, bloodied and glowing -

Gon froze in the doorway, causing Killua and Leorio to bump into him one after the other. They grumbled at him, coming around his side, and then caught sight of his face. They blinked at each other, and turned to look at the ring.

Below them, in a haze of spilled champagne and sweat, Hisoka glided back from the staggering hulk of a prizefighter. His white skin was as luminous as the screens above him, the toe of his heeled boot left an arc of blood across the floor as it moved in a perfect half circle to rest lightly behind him. His clothing was loose, it moved around him like a curtain in a window opened to the night, and it was spotless. The prizefighter staggered and then recovered, all of his burly mass settling back into a low center of gravity.

Leorio whistled. "That guy's doing pretty good for someone so far out of his weight class."

"He's big enough," Killua said darkly. "Don't be fooled just because the other guy is unnecessarily huge. That one is nothing but a lean, honed killing machine."

Gon broke his gaze just long enough to check one of the screens, the numbers of which were static. Those, he decided, must be the bets. And if he was interpreting that correctly, the money was evenly split between fighters. Afraid to miss anything, he skipped his gaze back down to the ring, just in time to watch Hisoka slip effortlessly between a barrage of fists like hammers swinging into nothing.

"Killing machine? You think?" Gon said, boots drifting across the concrete before he really even noticed it.

"Yeah," Killua said, from behind him - there was a grim edge in his voice - "whoever that guy is, he's not just some MMA reject. The way he moves…"

A blue spotlight flashed across Hisoka's face, lighting up the slicked back edges of his hair, curling with sweat, beautiful ringlets. Below his right eye, there was a single pale teardrop inked into the skin. Gon glanced back to Killua.

Killua's lips were curled down. "Whoever he is," he said, "he's done some brutal shit. I'm not joking. He's a killer."

In the flash and glitter, in the howl of spectators, Hisoka caught one of the prizefighter's arms in mid-swing. The whole muscled heft of it stopped dead in his grip, straining, as the fighter glared from it to Hisoka's cat-eyed grin. There was a crack, a howl - the flash of black suede beneath the lights - and Hisoka brought down the whole mountain with the crack of a single heel.

The audience screamed with delight as Hisoka reeled his leg in and settled back onto both feet, a hip cocked under his glowing hand. A referee ducked under the ring and started her count, while the body at her feet twitched helplessly.

"Hot _damn_ ," Leorio muttered, not far behind. "Someone that size, with a single kick…"

Victorious and smiling, Hisoka ran a hand through his hair as he scanned the crowd. Gon's breath caught in his chest - his heartbeat thumped in his wrists, hot and panicked - as Hisoka's gaze paused on Gon, in the midst of all the cheering mass, and his eyes narrowed.

"Gon," Killua hissed, "do you _know_ him?"

Hisoka's eyes, magnified on the screen above him, were as intent and savage as the eyes of a jungle predator. On the curve of his cheekbone, pink glitter shimmered.

"We spoke once before," Gon said, tongue clumsy in his dry mouth. "Years ago…"

"He sure seems like he remembers _you_ ," Leorio said, leaning forward with his hand up to shield his eyes from the lights.

"I don't even know his name," Gon said, with a twinge of disappointment.

"Well that's easy," Killua said. His tone was blunt and uneasy. He reached down and picked up a dirt-printed playbill from the floor, flipping it over in his hand. The last of the one on one fights, printed with a little black heart between the first and last names, unlike anything else on the roster: "Hisoka Morrow."

HXH

After Gon and Killua's fight - a knock down drag-out trail of fire through the ranks, one opponent after another - a stranger was congratulating him on their winnings at one of the warehouse's backmost tables, when Gon spotted a flash of glitter and luminous skin coming through the crowd. Killua, smugly soaking up the compliments several feet away, faded into a blur in Gon's vision.

Hisoka parted the crowd effortlessly, statuesque and so perfectly put together you'd never think he just came out of the ring. "My," he said, "you _have_ grown up, haven't you?"

"I guess I have," Gon said. "I don't think about it much."

There was a strange lilt to his accent, the memory of some faraway country that Gon couldn't place. When he'd arrived in America, he hadn't known enough about the language to tell a native accent from a foreign one. But that _was_ something foreign, he was sure now. Another immigrant, Gon thought.

"You remember me?" he said.

"I remember you," Hisoka said, "golden against the dark, the shiver that ran through you…" Like a coal overturned in a banked fire, something glowed up through his polite facade. "I never forget a beautiful thing. I thought then that you would either bleed yourself out in a week or grow into a sight more sweetly terrible than this city has ever seen."

Gon frowned. "Terrible?" he said. No one had called him sweet since his grandmother passed, but sweetly _terrible ?_

Hisoka smiled a vague little smile, but the banked coal fire remained in the flashing shape of his eyes. "In this world, all that people care about is the political. The struggle for chairman of the board, backroom conniving to get another step up on the ladder of business, dull dull _dull_. The rare few with real talents are a curiosity show at best."

Hisoka shrugged one shoulder, a pantomime of resigned disappointment.

"What I'm interested in," he said, "is real power. The strength it takes to snap a man's neck in one blow. Elite skill. Mortal conflict. To hold another creature's life in your hands, knowing you could take it if you so choose-"

The look that pinned Gon was ice-burning. Inside his chest, his lungs shivered like paper.

"But the world is hungry for blood," Hisoka said, in a voice as soft as a whisper, "and you come alive when your life is strung between your fingers. It's written into the very way you move."

Something deep inside of Gon wanted to retreat from underneath that hard fire gaze, the eyes as green as a cat's eyes. But Gon was Gon, and he had never backed down from something that frightened him before.

There was a friendly shout from the crowd, a stranger in a white suit muscling through with a woman who might have been his secretary at his heel. The moment shattered - the fire died, the ice cracked - as Hisoka's gaze flicked away from Gon. As he came closer, the man in the white suit lifted a hand and grinned, flicking his fingers thick with golden rings.

"Hisoka!" he called, "What do you think of the new talent? Not bad for rookies, eh?"

A few feet away, Killua turned to see what the shouting was about. When he caught sight of Hisoka in the middle of it all, his expression hardened. In a matter of steps, he was at Gon's side.

Hisoka retreated as far as the edge of the table and then stopped, settling onto his elbows on the tabletop. His back formed a perfect low curve as he glanced up through his lashes at the two boys. Even as Killua was bristling, his eyes settled on Gon. "Both of them are very talented," he said. " _Immense_ potential. I wonder where you trained…?"

"None of your business," Killua said.

"Biscuit Krueger," Gon said, "she trained my old man too."

"God damn it, Gon," Killua muttered.

Gon ignored it, like he usually did when people were swearing around him. He watched Hisoka, who seemed somehow more and less scary now that other people were around. Less, because they filled the empty space with warm human mass. More, because surrounded by all of them, it was obvious that there was something essentially _different_ about Hisoka. He wanted to prod it until he understood.

"We caught your fight," Gon said. "You were amazing out there. How did you do that thing with the kick?"

Hisoka rolled his cheek into one palm, eyes glittering in the dimness. "A magician never reveals their secrets," he said.

"A magician?" Gon said.

The lines of Hisoka's face curved up. In his free hand, he twirled his fingers and produced the glowing platinum square of a credit card with an unfamiliar name. Beside him, the man in the white suit jumped, patting at his pockets as the sensible looking woman behind him startled back. Hisoka flashed his teeth and then let his hand tip over, offering the card to the man and his assistant with two fingers.

"Your performance was delightful," Hisoka said, attention fixed firmly on Gon. "So raw, and yet... graceful. An absolute joy to watch. In my humble opinion, you're both much too good for these dime-a-dozen brutalists. What you both need," his eyes narrowed, "is a better class of opponent."

 _Thump_ went Gon's heart. "Like you?" he said.

"Mmm, maybe _eventually_ ," Hisoka said.

"Come on now," the man in the white suit interrupted, shoving his card back into his pocket with a distinctly insincere smile, "Hisoka, stop trying to poach my talent. They're too young to be interested in all that."

"In all what?" Killua said. Gon could almost hear his ears flicking with interest, like a cat's.

"This is _hardly_ the end of the line for competitive fighters on the west coast," Hisoka replied. "Once a year there's a meeting of serious competitors from all across the continent. I'd _love_ to see how you fair against some of them."

"Do you compete?" Gon said.

"Oh, every so often. It does get so _boring_ , with no one interesting to fight." For a moment the quality of his expression changed, a flicker of something so hungry and animal that it made the hair on the back of Gon's neck lift, something utterly alien. "If you were to enroll, I might just come back myself."

"What's the prize like?" Killua said, sharply.

"Easily ten times what you'll make here," Hisoka said, the glowing hunger gone all at once from his features without a trace. In fact, he seemed more bored than anything else.

Killua turned to Gon. His brow was creased with unease. "We could use the money, but…"

"I bet there's a lot of people from all over," Gon said, "maybe someone there knows Ging. He was trained like us too."

Killua winced. "It's a long shot," he said, "but I guess we've tried everything else at this point."

Gon looked back at Hisoka. "If we sign up," he said, "do you promise you'll do it too?"

Hisoka reeled himself back up, a slant of interest on his face. He settled his hands over his hips.

" _Gon_ ," Killua said.

"I want to fight Hisoka," Gon said. He tipped his chin up, fixed on the pale glow of Hisoka's eyes.

"Careful," Hisoka said, pressing a finger along the line of his cheek, "you'll bite off more than you can chew, darling."

" _Remember what I said_ ," Killua hissed.

"I wanna see it," Gon said, holding steady. "Up close. I wanna feel what it's like to fight him."

Hisoka smiled, and in it for the breadth of a second there was every glinting savage hunger glowing like the flakes of an opal. The air shifted. Even as the others pulled back, hackles up, Gon could not look away.

All at once, as breezily as if they were discussing a friend's dinner party, Hisoka shrugged. He opened his fingers. "Very well. I accept your deal. The event is the twenty-seventh of next month. I'll get you the contact of the organizer."

Killua sighed tight over his teeth. "We'll need to spend the next month training - Bisky's gonna hand us our asses for sure-"

Hisoka came around the edge of the table, moving like something out of a myth. He held out his hand, and Gon fished out his mostly-intact flip-phone. As Killua muttered logistics to himself, Hisoka punched in the number of his contact.

The sight of something as familiar as Gon's phone - something Gon owned, handled, touched every day - in Hisoka's elegant hands was enough to make Gon's stomach twist with… he wasn't sure what.

Hisoka glanced up at him. His finger hovered over the tiny keyboard.

"You're looking for someone?" he said.

"My dad," Gon said. "Ging Freecs. No one's seen him in almost ten years." He frowned, a fist tightening at his side. "He's not dead. I know he's not. He's too good at his job to be dead."

"Interesting," Hisoka said. He finished punching in the number and handed the phone back to Gon, his hand unfolding as if to reveal a magician's flower. As Gon took it, the tips of their fingers brushed with a jolt of something as strange and shocking as static. He pulled it back against his chest, eyes blinking wide.

"If you're looking for someone," he said, "I'm sure you already know the value of a few well placed contacts."

Hisoka glanced past him, most likely at Killua, and then dipped in close. As he passed one hand over the other, he drew a single black calling card from the slit between his middle and index finger. He offered it to Gon.

"Wow," Gon said, no closer to figuring out the trick now than he'd been the first time. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

Hisoka shrugged. "Vegas," he said, "the least interesting thing I learned in that city."

Gon took the card. In bubblegum pink across the front, there was Hisoka's name and address, and across the back the intricately lettered phrase: CAVEAT LECTOR.

"What does it mean?" Gon said.

Hisoka drew back. The blue ink on the crown of his cheek transfixed Gon. It was barely anything; on a darker skinned person, it would have been almost invisible. And yet, it was as stark and distracting as if it had been inked in black.

"It means," Hisoka said, "you should think carefully before you engage the service of strangers."

HXH

Everyone who knew Hisoka had something different to tell Gon about him. Kurapika unfolded a folio of Known Contacts and slid Hisoka's picture across the countertop as Leorio cracked eggs for brunch at his sink. In the tense mexican standoff of a stalled elevator, Killua's overbearing brother Illumi revealed that he was the one who had picked Hisoka up from prison the day he was released.

Deep in the recesses of the ghost net, where deleted webpages linger forever, they found an advertisement for a one night only showing of a Las Vegas stage magician, with an assistant's credit for one Hisoka Morrow. None of it seemed to make sense together.

The black and pink card burned in Gon's wallet, phantom hot to the touch every time his fingers passed over the leather. During the month that he and Killua trained, every evening, noses to the grindstone, the card was never far from his mind.

"Come _on,_ " Killua said, one night, as Gon balanced sweating on his fingertips in the garden. "I can _hear_ your brain grinding. Will you stop thinking about that guy for one night?"

"Sorry," Gon said, "I'll think quieter."

Killua sighed hard, collapsing back on a lawn chair. "What is it with you? If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a crush or something."

Gon hummed thoughtfully.

"What?" Killua sat forward, all at once, "No, no way. You can't."

Gon ignored the exhausted shake in his arm. "I'm not sure yet," he said. "It's complicated. You know I'm not good with complicated stuff."

"That guy would rather suck your blood than take you on a date!" Killua said. "He's a freak! At some point Illumi picked him up from _actual prison!_ "

"Yeah," Gon said, "that's weird. I wonder what he was in for."

"You're not taking this seriously enough!" Killua shouted.

Gon blew out a puff of air and shifted his balance slightly, feeling the insistent tug of gravity on his toes.

"It's bad enough you want to _fight_ him," Killua said, "when he's clearly got years of experience on you. Even I wouldn't try to take him in a fair fight, and I've been at this stuff a heck of a lot longer than you. He's not gonna go easy on you."

"I don't _want_ him to go easy on me," Gon grumbled.

"We've got enough on our hands trying to find your dad," Killua said. "The team of people we're going to need for Peru - just to get in the door, not to mention boots on the ground, we need survivalists and naturalists and translators, muscle-" He scraped the heels of his hands over his face. "If we didn't honestly need the money, I wouldn't even be agreeing to do this tournament."

"I know you don't like fighting for an audience," Gon said, "after your family and all. I'm glad you're doing this with me anyway."

"No, that's-" Killua made an angry static noise, "that's not what's bothering me, I'll walk you all the way to hell if you ask me to. There's just so _much_ to put together. Kite's still too weak to travel, and even with the others on board we don't have _enough._ The fact that you're not stressed about it is stressing _me_ out."

"We can handle it," Gon said. "Something will turn up. We just have to keep our ears open."

Killua looked at him, his blue eyes tired and heavy between his fingers. "I just keep thinking," he said, "after what happened the last time we went chasing some rumor down into the jungle, who'd be crazy enough to follow _us?"_

Gon went completely still. Slowly, submitting to gravity, his heels drifted back until he toppled over against the grass with a whump.

"Oh," he said.

HXH

In the hazy blueness of evening, the far-away mountains were indistinguishable from the sky. Instead, what Gon could see over the edge of the balcony, was glittering light—gold and pink, thousands of little checkmark box windows against dark towers. It was an incredible view, and judging by how expensive a motel in the city was just for a couple of nights, it had got to be worth more money than Gon had even seen.

Gon was contemplating the horizon, at that moment, because contemplating Hisoka was way too risky. Hisoka sat with his back to the window, legs crossed at the knees, painting his nails.

The coat of polish went on shiny and clear, like water, ripples of light reflecting in the liquid as it lazily dried. Down drags the brush, fanning over the elegant tips of each nail. They reminded Gon of the arches on old fashioned cathedrals. Gon had never seen them snag or snap, and he could only imagine how deliberately Hisoka had to move to avoid that at all times. Like the heels. Gon's eye drifted down to the boots. Those could only make every kind of effort demonstrably more difficult.

"Isn't it rude to stare?" Hisoka said. Gon's attention immediate snapped up from his shoes to his face, and then just as quickly skittered left. He wasn't quite sure about the way Hisoka was smiling at him.

Killua said Hisoka had probably killed people. If he was right—and Killua was usually right, Killua was very knowledgeable—then Hisoka might have been the first murderer Gon ever met.

"Sorry," Gon said. "I didn't mean to. It's only—" In his peripheral he could see the slow, methodical drag of clear liquid. "—How do you not break those?" he finished.

Hisoka stopped painting, his brush suspended above his finger. His eyebrows went up. "Break what, exactly?"

Gon splayed his fingers in front of himself. "Your nails, I mean. Aunt Mito keeps hers shorter than yours but she must break one every month, and you like to fight so it must be double hard for you, since Aunt Mito almost never punches anybody."

"Almost never?" Hisoka echoed.

"Well," Gon said, recalling one of Mito's sayings, "owners of drinking establishments are sometimes called upon to be the voice of reason in an uncouth world."

Something about that must have struck Hisoka as funny. His eyes flashed bright and wide and his breath came out in a little snort, involuntary, as he pressed the knuckles of his painting hand against his twitching lips. A single drop of clearcoat gathered dangerously at the end of the brush.

The moment barely lasted—Hisoka put himself back together pretty fast, corralling his features into the same bland interest from before—but Gon kind of wished it would have stayed. It's not exactly that Hisoka was better looking when he laughed like that, because he wasn't really, it's just that this is the first time Gon really felt like he'd gotten a sincere reaction. Everything else, in comparison, felt a little… performed.

Hisoka effortlessly diverted the drop of clearcoat just as it was about to drip onto his shirt. "Would you fetch me that bottle of wine in the chiller? I'm afraid I can't do much until my nails dry."

Gon gave him a dubious look, but obliged. The silver bucket was perched on the kitchen counter—there were no tables in the apartment, which might have something to do with the lack of space or with Hisoka's disinterest in entertaining. There was really just the couch and the chair by the window, and the magazine-perfect granite countertop, and over all Gon was getting this sense that for all that Hisoka lived here, there was very little of _Hisoka_ in the place. Maybe the bedroom was different? He sure wasn't gonna ask to see it though.

"So," Hisoka said, "I hope you're not here to tell me you're withdrawing after all. I will be terribly disappointed."

Gon shook his head. "No, actually, I wanted to talk to you about the fight. Our fight."

"You do realize we're at nearly opposite ends of the bracket," Hisoka said, "you will have to defeat at least four people in order to be paired up with me."

Gon fished out the wine bottle, chill and wet against his palms. When he turned, he caught Hisoka tracking his movements with interest.

"That's fine," he said.

"They're some of the best fighters in the world," Hisoka pointed out. "At their peak, all of them. Masters of their crafts."

"I can beat them," Gon said, simply. "If that's what it takes to get to you."

It was barely perceptible, but Hisoka froze. His shining nails hung in the air, catching the light. "Oh," he breathed, after a moment. "Be still, my heart."

Well that was… a good sign? Gon worked the cork out of the bottle and poured pale pink wine into the glass at Hisoka's elbow, where it leapt and rippled against its confines.

"Actually," Gon said, "I was thinking of making a different deal with you."

"Were you?" Hisoka murmured.

"Ten minutes," Gon said, as he set the bottle down on the coffee table. "If I can last ten minutes against you, in the arena, you'll do something for me."

"Ten minutes?" Hisoka echoed, tucking a knuckle delicately under his cheek.

"I know I probably can't win against you yet," Gon said. "And that's fine, I'll work my way up to it. But I bet I can hold my own for ten, even at your full strength."

"Ten minutes is a long time," Hisoka said. "Plenty of fights don't even last five. Even if you're technically talented enough to fend me off, would you have the stamina?"

Gon folded his arms. "Don't underestimate me," he said. "I've been keeping up with Killua since I was twelve."

"Illumi's brother," Hisoka filled in, with a glint of interest. "Yes, I saw him. The two of you are a force to be reckoned with. I wonder how you'll do when you're stripped at last of his support..."

"Have we got a deal?" Gon said.

Hisoka tilted his head. "If you succeed," he said, "what will you ask of me?"

Gon's heart thumped. The moment of truth. "You're bored here," he said, "aren't you?"

Hisoka narrowed his eyes. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know," Gon said. "You just don't feel… present here. It's beautiful and empty, and easy. You're not challenged."

"Suppose you're right," Hisoka said. He slipped the glass into the V of his fingers and took a sip. "What do you propose to do about it?"

"In three months, we're charting a flight down to Peru," Gon said. "There's a ruin deep in the jungle that no one has been able to get to since it was spotted in a fly-over twenty years ago. It's the last place anyone can remember hearing from Ging. It's going to be hard and scary and dangerous, and a lot of work. Some people probably won't want us there. I want you to come with us."

"Me?" Hisoka said.

"I know it's not what you normally do," Gon said, sweeping a hand over the wine and the view, "but maybe that's a good thing."

In the glass the wine almost glowed with the light from the window, as if the sunset was trapped inside the liquid. Hisoka ran his tongue over his lip, and Gon forgot all about whether or not it was dangerous to contemplate him too closely.

"A strange request," Hisoka said. "But, not uninteresting."

Gon thrust out his hand. "Have we got a deal?"

Hisoka looked him over. Delicately, he slid his own hand into Gon's grip.

"I still wonder," he said, "why you would ask _me."_

The touch crackled, the pads of Gon's fingers tingling with the gentle brush of skin. "I don't think this is a good world for someone like you," Gon said, suddenly certain of the thought, although he'd never considered it before. "You're like a wild animal trapped in a menagerie. It's nothing but walls."

For a moment they only looked at each other. Then, slowly, Hisoka withdrew his hand.

"And you," he said, "are a flower than can thrive in any soil, aren't you?"

Gon shrugged. His palm glowed with the memory of slender fingers. "The first time I ever saw you," he said, "I thought you were so, so scary. Like a pretty nightmare."

He looked up. At the rose-gold edge of the world, there was the promise of something even more necessary and powerful than his missing father - something strange and glowing, something that no amount of text books or television talk shows had been able to explain to him. He looked back to Hisoka. He grinned.

"There isn't anyone I'd rather have on my side," he said, "than another secret moon man."

HXH

It isn't until the heat and darkness of the jungle that Gon learns, at last, that Hisoka's nails are press-on fakes which break off easily in the skin of an opponent, and that the perfect smoothness of his skin is a façade which hides a constellation of pale freckles.


End file.
